Basic facts
Born in Lincoln, England. One younger sister. Attended Lincoln Christ's Hospital Girls' High School. Joined the WRAF working at RAF Waddington, near Lincoln, where I soon met Chris Mackie, who was posted back from a tour in Aden, bronzed, white-blond and thin as a rake. We married and had two sons, Andrew and Kevin (they prefer Andy and Kev so I'll indulge them). We moved around a lot with the RAF, including a spell in Berlin where, as it happens, Kev was born -- both boys have one-eighth German blood, through my maternal grandmother. The other bits, as far as I know, are pure English. Well, as pure as we can get after so many invasions through history.
After 23 years service, Chris left the RAF when our sons were starting secondary education. We settled near my parents in North Hykeham, Lincoln, but as Andy went to Uni and Kev decided to take up nursing, winning a place at the training school in Norwich, Chris and I also moved to Norfolk and he became the property manager of Felbrigg Hall, a National Trust mansion near Cromer. From there we eventually moved to West Norfolk, and here we are.
Older son Andy now works for the Indium Corporation in New York and has a professional blog on their website, while Kev is a senior officer in the RAF. Both are happily married with two children -- Andy has two boys and Kev two girls (oh, and two dogs, Barney and Charley, can't forget them!).
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Writing career
Started scribbling aged 8, continued... Wrote wildly imaginative stories set in the jungle, or outer space, or the temples of Bangkok (this from a girl who'd never been further than the seaside town of Mablethorpe, thirty miles away on the coast of Lincolnshire); also indulged in poetry, well, rhyming stuff, pomes (see 'Poems' section: have I improved much? Maybe not).
As a teenager, my romance stories, sent to magazines, all came home dejected (no, that's not a misprint). Still, as they say, I was learning my craft.
Started writing plays next -- a couple were put on by the 'Young Wives' of the local Methodist chapel, one for Easter (I, barely out of my teens, was obliged to play the elderly Elizabeth, mother of John Baptist) and one for Christmas (based in an oasis where the three kings had left their wives and slaves, all of various nationalities, great fun for costumes).
Chris's foster-sister, Shirley Raines, ran the drama group of her local Women's Institute and asked me to write a 'different' play for an all-woman cast. I did so. It came second in the Hunstanton Drama Festival: the adjudicator said he'd thought it best not to let the local WI win again as they were always winning. Oh, great!
Cautionary tale here... I gave the script of another play to the adjudicator, who had promised to give me a crit. Life intervened, having children, moving around Europe etc. and after several years when we returned home to visit Chris's folks in Norfolk, Shirley showed me the script of a published play. It was MY SCRIPT! Published under the name of that blessed adjudicator's wife! At the time I was still only just beginning and had not joined the Society of Authors, so the theft went unpunished. My only consolation is that I doubt the plagiarising pair earned much money from it. Contrary to popular belief, most writers don't make a lot of money. The rich ones are the ones whose names you know.
I had always maintained that I had not the patience to write a proper book: short stories were more my line. However, living in Berlin inspired me to write a spy story/murder mystery/romance ('A Season for Singing')which eventually, having been rejected several times and stuffed into a drawer, appeared as my fifth published novel after a severe rewrite or two.
Meantime I had discovered that I loved the space a novel offered, giving room for complications, more descriptive passages and added oomph, so I began scribbling a succession of mystery-romances, around 60,000 words each, and sending them out to an assortment of suitable publishers, who all sent them home with kind rejection slips. Six books later, after one particular publisher (Hale, London) said, 'Not quite, this time, but send us more,' a manuscript was accepted. It came out in1971, titled 'Robin's Song', and I was as proud as all new mothers. To add to my delight, that first novel also appeared in a few paperback versions, in German translation, and in 1995, to my surprise, was belatedly produced in Large Print, following most of its younger siblings.
Having found my forte, I continued to produce similar books, writing up to six a year at one point (which is why my publisher introduced a second pen-name for me, because they could only bring out three a year under any one name). So I became Cathy Christopher.
In time, writing different genres for different publishers, I garnered eight different pen-names. For full details of these and all other of my books, see the Published Books lists.
My first real 'break-out' from the constrictions of formula writing was a historical novel about Boudicca (the Celtic warrior queen formerly known as Boadicea). This required a good deal of research, another thing I had always claimed to dislike and which I avoided wherever possible. However... it soon became clear that research was the key to longer and deeper fiction.
This first historical novel, 'The People of the Horse' (published by W H Allen, London, 1987), remains a favourite with many readers. It was later followed by three Norfolk sagas set in the county which is now my home and which I have come to love - beautiful Norfolk, in England.
When Chris decided to try something new, he won a job with the National Trust at Felbrigg Hall, which obliged us to live in this huge old house (what an imposition!), full of grandeur and history. Our own apartment was pretty magnificent, too, especially after Chris got to be head honcho. Unfortunately the demands of his job kept impinging on mine. If he needed an extra pair of hands, for selling tickets, acting as room warden, helping in the tea room, shop or with office work, guess who was first choice. Yes, right, me. I even did a four-month stint as his second-in-command, but you'll have to read the book(s) to learn about that. Yes, books resulted, as you might have expected.
With my fiction-writing being constantly interrupted in mid-creative flow by the demands of Felbrigg, I started to write about what was happening around us. The first book took me all of six weeks to complete. Proved to be my first best-seller and, of course, my first non-fiction work (apart from a few magazine articles). There are now three books in the series.
At the end of 1990 we returned to a more normal(!) life in West Norfolk and I began to work in many different genres. I wrote a How-to book for hopeful writers, a slew of short stories, the second Felbrigg book and a saga set around the world of lavender-growing (the home of Norfolk Lavender is on the edge of our village). This book needs some work still, but is on the way.
I also turned again to play-writing, producing a one-act comedy titled 'Boudicca's Last Battle', about a drama group putting on (or rather, trying in vain to put on, a play about the warrior queen). More good costumes, great fun. I engaged actors and produced the play myself, entering it in the Adjudicated Drama section of the Hunstanton and District Festival of Arts in 2001, exactly 36 years since that first effort which just failed to win the cup. This time, to my delight and surprise (I was caught eating an ice-cream when the first prize was announced), my play swept the board: Best Original Script; Best Production; Best Female Actor and Best Male Actor. What a glorious night, with Kev and his wife Alison there to witness the event. Such moments are cherished all the more for being so rare.
Another milestone of those 'end of the Millennium' years was my being asked to write a history of the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service (PMRAFNS). I accepted, proud and privileged to be trusted with the task, but only later realized what a huge undertaking it would be, ranging from 1918 to 2000, and covering two world wars and half the world. My brief was to produce NOT a dry and dusty tome filled with dates and data, but a lively history full of stories of real nurses across eight decades. How I managed it is told in the book's introduction. Titled 'Sky Wards' it was launched with a cocktail party at the RAF Museum, Hendon, a special blue cocktail named Skywards, lots of scrambled egg on hats, elderly heroines who had served in far-flung field hospitals, 1939-46, and Terry Waite as guest of honour -- as one of the 'Beirut hostages' he had been nursed by the PMs on his release from his long imprisonment during the '90s. I am assured that my book is now required reading for all PMs in training. Addendum: In November 2008 Chris and I attended the PMs 90th Anniversary celebration, a cocktail party at RAF Museum Hendon. We met their current royal patron, the charming and delightful Princess Alexandra, who enquired what I was currently writing and asked me to send her copy of 'The Prince's Thorn'; as a child she and her family lived for a while at Appleton House on Sandringham Estate. That same evening I did two brief 'history resumé' spots standing under the nose of the Lancaster Bomber. A lovely occasion.
Finding myself struck with writer's block after this three-year task ended, I turned again to short stories and started a couple of novels and a couple of plays, which I'm still working on, so watch this space.
As an exercise, I set our writers' group the task of writing something, however short, using words all beginning with the same letter. This is an old exercise, I know, but my own piece turned out longer than expected and I was surprised when most of the others produced a single sentence that made little sense. So, during the autumn and winter of 2002, I set about trying to write a proper story using all alliterative words. I began with letter A, I believe, achieved a few hundred words with beginning, middle and end, and laughs! and went on to try more. Believe it or not, I ended up with a collection of 27 stories, one for each letter of the alphabet.* Some are rather short and a couple need a translation (which I've supplied) to make sense, but one or two are actually proper story length. And they are all complete stories. As older son Andy remarked after reading a couple or three, 'They've even got punch-lines!'
* The extra story? Oh, yes, that uses just twenty-six words but manages to explain everything, from Adam to the end of all things (which begins with Z): see Stories/All about Amy page sidebar 'Alphabetical Armageddon'.
Most recently I spent three years researching for a biography of a Victorian woman who, with her husband, leased a farm on the Sandringham Estate, beginning in 1862, the same year that Prince Albert Edward of Wales (Queen Victoria's oldest son, the future King Edward VII) acquired the estate. She remained there until 1880, when she was cruelly driven to bankruptcy and exile by the Prince and his minions. Or so she claimed in her book about those years. My researches led me to believe there might be another side to the story. Slowly I uncovered more of the truth, from old letters and documents hidden away in various Record Offices, and finally, during two revelatory days spent in the Royal Archive at Windsor, it became evident that the 'Lady Farmer' had told rather less than the whole truth.
The resulting book, 'The Prince's Thorn' is now available. See Latest.
Other interests
I'm always involved in a literary project of some kind and I enjoy meeting other writers. A favourite event was the Writers' Conference held in Scarborough, Yorkshire, every year during the '70s and '80s where we made many friends and swapped ideas and experiences. A warm hello to any of the old Scarboro' crowd who may be surfing in this area of the Web.
Over the years I've started four writers' groups, taught classes in Creative Writing and given scores of talks on subjects to do with my work. I've been as far afield as America doing lectures and was invited to give an after-dinner talk in the main hall of the Botanical Gardens, Birmingham (where a G7 summit was held not long before), for Soroptimists International, whose guests included the Lord Mayor of Birmingham and Soroptimists from around the world. That, plus being after-dinner speaker at the 75th Anniversary of the Solihull National Trust Centre, and after-lunch speaker for a gathering of the International Club of Air Force Officers Wives at the RAF Club on Piccadilly, are probably the highlights of my speaking career so far. However, November 2008 surpassed them all! See under Talks on the Latest page.
Chris and I are on the committee of the Princess Theatre Club, whose aim is to support the Princess Theatre in Hunstanton and to stage major plays twice-yearly, in May and November. Chris mainly does publicity and I produce the newsletter (and am also the spider spinning their website, which I was fool enough to volunteer for but, after all, it's writing, in a way and once I'd launched my own web it seemed churlish not to design another).
PTC website is:
http://www.princesstheatreclub.co.uk
We also get involved in productions either as
actors, or back-stage, or front-of-house.
I have also started hosting 'Poetry at the Princess'
mornings to help with funds and raise the profile of our charming theatre
with its friendly sea-view bar.
In mid-November 2008 Chris and I were both cast in Terence Rattigan's dark drama Cause Célèbre. He was the husband who got murdered! No, not by me. Great fun.
And in spring 2009 I produced and directed the Alan Ayckbourn comedy 'Comic Potential' three performances mid-May.
I'm a great film fan and we both love theatre, especially shows in the West End when we visit London. We adore the revamped South Bank, very much the 'place to be' in the capital.
And I read, of course, many different
types of books, though a special favourite is 'swords and dragons'
fantasies, especially the sequence of nine novels by Robyn Hobb --
the Assassin trilogy, the Liveships trilogy, and finally the Fool
trilogy. Wonderful stuff that I read over and over again.
My newest recommended author is Kate
Elliott, swords and sorcery stuff but wonderfully well-written and
imagined. Also China Miéville -- a genuine original in the fantasy field. Try him.
Though I've written a lot of romances, I don't often read them for relaxation.
We also enjoy visiting coffee shops where we often run into friends, eating out when we can, and 'bimbling' round the beautiful Norfolk countryside. Our family is a great joy too. Our two grand-daughters are only an hour away, in Peterborough, but sadly our two grandsons are on the other side of the Atlantic, in Clinton, NY, USA.